


a city you've never seen

by seventhswan



Series: Personal Top Three [3]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Domestic, M/M, Slice of Life, Slow Burn, Soft Boys, engagement cactus, spoilers up to the beginning of the third palace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-06
Updated: 2017-08-06
Packaged: 2018-12-12 03:19:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11728398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventhswan/pseuds/seventhswan
Summary: Akira comes home at five with a handful of irises, which he hands to Yusuke. Yusuke is so surprised he almost drops them.“They don't have enough blooming days left, so we can't sell them,” Akira explains. Even after a subway ride there’s still dirt on him; a few crumbs of soil rain down on the floor as he takes off his bag. He smells earthy and fresh, like he’s been rolling around in a forest. “Thought you might want to paint them.”Yusuke stays at Leblanc for longer.





	a city you've never seen

**Author's Note:**

> Set just before the investigation of the third palace, and contains spoilers up to that point. I couldn't find the flower-shop owner's name, so I just picked a surname for her.
> 
> This story is just some of my favorite things put in a blender, honestly.
> 
> WARNINGS: I didn’t use the archive’s rape/non-con warning because Shiho’s rape is only mentioned twice in this and no detail is given, but I have to warn that it _is_ mentioned. Because this is a story about Yusuke, there are also mild and very brief references to child neglect/abuse.

The second he arrives to stay at Leblanc, Yusuke knows he’ll leave. He washes the pot that Akira unearths, he laughs when Ann throws a handful of peas at Ryuji in retaliation for his tuneless whistling, and he knows he won’t stay.

He’s not quite sure why he even left the dorms. He just started to pack, and then it felt so good he kept going.

Akira bumps his shoulder companionably against Yusuke’s, as though he can smell that Yusuke’s thoughts are on their way to somewhere uncomfortable. He’s stirring the broth with his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows. Yusuke, shamefully, isn’t doing anything useful. He half expects to be rebuked, but all Akira says is, “what vegetables do you like best, Yusuke?”

Oh. Yusuke looks down at the huge pile of washed greens (and oranges, and yellows) on the cutting board. They look so vibrant.

“Ah…” he says, considering them. “Leeks. I think.”

“Bleh! _Leeks_?” Ryuji yells immediately. Morgana, who has been chasing the skittery peas across the attic floor, lets out a yelp and skids straight into the wall.

“Oh, grow up,” Ann says. Yusuke sort of hopes she’ll flick more peas at him, but she settles for rolling her eyes.

Akira cheerfully picks up an enormous knife – it’s really more of a cleaver – and starts shredding the vegetables without blinking. The knife flashes in tandem with his glasses. It’s really quite the sight.

“When did you… get so good at that?” Ann asks, her voice slightly tremulous. She inches slightly closer to Ryuji.

“I live in a café,” Akira says, like that’s all there is to it. 

Akira cuts more leeks than any other vegetable. He uses the whole bunch.

“How does this taste so good when it’s got half a field of leeks in?” Ryuji says, squinting at his half-empty bowl a half hour later.

“I let Morgana stir it,” Akira says. “It’s all him.”

Ryuji sits up and starts spitting theatrically. 

“Ugh! Cat hair!” he complains, wiping his tongue with his fingertips. Morgana’s hackles rise. Ann laughs helplessly, holding her stomach and groaning. She’s spread out on the sofa.

“I can’t,” she moans. “Ugh, it’s like I swallowed a beach ball. Ryuji, carry me home.”

“Like I’d do that, after all those peas you threw at me!” he says, but even Yusuke can tell he doesn’t mean it.

“You could both stay here too,” Akira says. Ann and Ryuji share a speaking look, but Yusuke can’t work out what they’re saying.

“Nah,” Ryuji says. He cracks his neck, bending it first one way, then the other. “We’ll let you two roomies hash things out.”

“Ah, about that –“ Yusuke starts to say, but then Ryuji gets down on his knees on the attic floor.

“Come on,” he says over his shoulder to Ann. “I’ll give you a piggyback to the station.”

Ann squeals happily, and gets on. She clasps her hands around his collarbone, and he stands up carefully, letting her get her balance. There’s a tenderness to it all that makes Yusuke feel as though he’s crammed himself into a space he doesn’t belong. Ryuji’s hand cups the back of her thigh so easily.

That feeling doesn’t lessen after Ann and Ryuji leave, when he helps Akira take the hotpot downstairs, and then stands around while Akira hunts out a plastic container.

“For Sojiro,” Akira says, ladling a serving into it. He writes ‘Sojiro’ on a label and affixes it to the lid. “He won’t eat anything I make unless I tell him to.”

They brush their teeth standing next to one another. Akira keeps his toothbrush in a little mug with a turtle on it. His sleeping clothes are navy, the same shade as the sea surrounding the turtle, and they look terribly soft. 

“It was really okay, right?” Akira says. It takes a moment for Yusuke to understand him around the toothbrush. “The hotpot. You weren’t just saying it?”

“It was delicious,” Yusuke says. He wants to say more, about how much Akira must really care about Sojiro, but he’s trying to work on not just blurting everything he thinks or feels. It makes people uncomfortable.

They go back upstairs. Yusuke has virtually always shared a room, but he doesn’t know about Akira. Judging by the clumsy little dance they do around each other ( _oh, were you ..._ _oh no, please, go right ahead_ ) while they get ready for bed, Yusuke thinks Akira probably isn’t used to this. 

They stand awkwardly beside the attic’s one bed.

“I’ll sleep on the sofa,” Akira says, at the exact same time Yusuke says _he_ will.

“You’re the guest –“

“I’m intruding –“

Akira crosses his arms. He looks more like Joker than Yusuke has ever seen him look. Probably because he’s taken off his glasses for bed.

“You’re not intruding. And you don’t look like you sleep that great.” Akira shrugs one shoulder, and glances away. “No offense.”

“But you’re our leader,” Yusuke says.

Akira pauses. There must be something in the way Yusuke says it, because he gets a strange expression on his face. In the silence that follows, Yusuke notices for the first time that Morgana isn’t there. He must have fallen asleep under the counter downstairs.

“That’s important to you,” Akira says. “Isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Yusuke says, truthfully. Akira works hard as their leader. He deserves to sleep well.

“Okay,” Akira says, and he goes and gets the lights, and then lies down in the bed.

The sofa is more comfortable than Yusuke expects. There’s a jabby, loose spring near his ankle, but he just curls up away from it. It’s June, so it’s raining outside, and the drops hit the window steadily, like the rapid heartbeat of something very small.

“Is the sofa –“

“It’s fine. It’s actually very comfortable.”

The attic is more peaceful than almost any place Yusuke has ever slept. The only time he’s had a quieter room was in the last few months at the atelier, when everyone else was gone – but that wasn’t peaceful. The room was freezing with nobody else in it, and every creak made him hyper-aware. He wonders if living with his mother had felt like being here in the attic. Safe.

“If this was a sleepover, we’d be telling secrets right now,” Akira says. It’s dark enough that Yusuke can’t make out his expression, but his voice is smile-shaped. Yusuke turns over, so he’s facing towards the bed.

“I have a secret,” Akira confesses. Yusuke doesn’t mean to hold his breath, but it happens, like the instinct to breathe in when you’re lifting a heavy weight. “I don’t like leeks either.”

Yusuke snorts an ugly laugh and then claps a hand to his mouth, mortified, but Akira laughs too. 

“I have a secret,” Yusuke says; not because he really does, but because it’s only fair. “Today was one of the best days I've ever had.”

Akira shifts, making the bedsprings sigh, and says nothing. Yusuke wonders if he’s fallen asleep. He might have. It wasn’t the most interesting secret.

Just when he's snuggled down under the blanket and given up on getting an answer, Akira finally says, "I'm glad."

|

Yusuke has a moment of disorientation when he wakes. The morning light slants in through the window in a way he’s never seen before, not anywhere. The room he’s in smells fresh and clean, piny, not damp and moldering – and then he feels the sofa under him and the light, soft blanket on top of him, and he remembers. He rolls onto his side. Akira is lying on his back, blinking up at the ceiling. Yusuke isn’t sure he knows that Yusuke’s awake. The light falls across his face, and trails down over one of his hands, tucked around the edge of the covers.

“I had a dream we were on a train,” Akira says, without moving. He could be addressing the ceiling. “Ryuji, too.”

His eyes aren’t all-the-way focused. His glasses are still propped on the shelf.

“Where were we going?” Yusuke asks, but Akira doesn’t answer. He climbs out of bed and fumbles for his glasses. He misses the first time, sending them clattering to the floor. He swears softly and just stares at them for a few moments, as though they’re going to leap up into his hand of their own accord.

Yusuke uses the edge of his blanket to hide his smile.

They have breakfast together down in the café, under Sayuri. Yusuke is normally partial to a traditional Japanese fish breakfast, but Akira puts tinned peaches and cinnamon and brown sugar in both their oatmeal bowls, and Yusuke thinks he could get used to it. The pillow creases on Akira’s cheek slowly fill themselves back in as they eat, and Yusuke offers to wash the dishes before he packs to return to the dorms.

Akira looks at him, still soft with sleep.

“You can’t go yet,” he says, as though this is a conversation they’ve already had. “We’re escorting Ann to the hospital today.”

|

It’s three stops on the train, then a change, and five more. There aren’t enough seats, so Akira and Yusuke crowd around Ann, shielding her. Yusuke’s knees knock against Ann’s, and Akira’s shoulder bumps his when the train rocks a little.

“You guys didn’t have to come, you know,” Ann says, frowning. She wipes her cheek where a stray drop of rain has started to slide down towards her chin. “When it’s raining like this, and all. It’s just hassle for you.”

Yusuke has never really had friends. There were the others at the atelier, back before – well, back before he was the only one. But they were more like siblings; they had to accept him, for better or worse. So he doesn’t really know - he _thinks_ Ann doesn’t mean they really shouldn’t have come, but he isn’t completely sure.

“So much hassle,” Akira says, heaving an exaggerated sigh. He slants a playful look at Yusuke. “We could have stayed home and played video games, but now…”

Yusuke can’t work out what he’s supposed to say in response. He blinks stupidly.

“Jeez, you jerk!” Ann says, and hits Akira with her open palm. Her expression is at odds with her tone, her big eyes alight. She was upset before, Yusuke realizes, all of a sudden. She was upset, and now she isn’t. If he had painted her the moment they got on the train, he would have put her amidst a blue cloud, and now, her portrait would be flecked with gold. He didn’t even realize. 

The train pulls away especially abruptly at the next station, and Akira steadies himself with a hand on Yusuke’s hip. It’s an accidental, glancing blow, the warmth of his hand there and then gone, before Yusuke can even really feel it. 

| 

There’s a flower shop next to the hospital, big enough that you can step right in and be surrounded by flowers on all sides.

“Hanamura wants a place like this,” Akira says. “Big.” 

There are hanging baskets of flowers suspended from the ceiling, and he reaches out and touches a shiny leaf, rubbing it gently between his fingertips.

Hanamura must be his boss at the flower place in Shibuya station. Yusuke has never met her, but Akira comes to the hideout with dirt under his nails sometimes. Occasionally he brings bouquets that only have a day or two of flowering left, and so can’t be sold, and gives them to Ann.

“A hospital is a good place to have a flower shop,” Yusuke says, and then realizes a beat too late how morbid a thing that is to say. Akira is looking at him.

“I – I wonder if the flowers mind, living underground,” Yusuke says quickly. “In the station, at Hanamura’s.”

The corner of Akira’s mouth quirks up. He runs a reverent fingertip over a lily petal.

“I wonder, too,” he says.

Whatever they’re looking for, Akira doesn’t find it amongst the flowers. They leave the shop and venture a little further up the street. ( _You don’t have to wait for me_ , Ann had said. Her umbrella had dripped in her hand, even though she’d rolled it up. _You don’t. Honestly. I’ll be a while._

Akira had held up his phone.

 _Text us_ , he’d said, wiggling it at her. _When you’re finished._ )

There’s a patisserie along the street, too. Akira spends a long time examining the rows of packaged cakes and boxes of sweets, long enough that Yusuke leaves him to it. He goes up to the fresh-baked counter, and looks at the boy behind it. He has a wide smile and a little bit of pale hair sneaking out from under his hairnet.

“Hello,” he says, and oh, a foreigner, just like Ann.

“Hello,” Yusuke says, slowly and deliberately. Unlike Ann, this boy has a strong accent. His smile widens even more – maybe Yusuke sounds funny. He tries to think of something else to say. The rows and rows of treats under the glass are almost too perfect to be real. They’re shiny with sugar glaze, big, unlikely towers of strawberries and raspberries and gooseberries.

“What would you –“ he begins, and then stops, because ‘recommend’ is a big word, he thinks. “Which – what one of these is. Best. For you.”

The boy’s brow creases as he parses the fumbling, then smoothes.

“My favorite?” he says, which isn’t quite what Yusuke really wanted to ask, but it’s close enough. He nods.

The boy points to a fat orange éclair.

“They make this where I am from,” he says, and then he makes a couple of noises that are both charming and incomprehensible, and must be words of some kind. He laughs at Yusuke’s expression.

“France,” he clarifies. “I am from a little town about fifty miles from Paris. You know of Paris?”

Yusuke nods. He has – he has an _idea_ of Paris, anyway. Lots of art, and people interested in art, and good coffee. He’s certain Leblanc is a word in French, but he can’t remember what it means.

“Do you miss it?” he asks. A proper lock of blond hair escapes the hairnet, flopping towards the boy’s blue eyes. He shoves it back under with a flick of the wrist so practiced that it must happen a good twenty times a day.

“Yes and no,” the boy says. “I am only in Tokyo for six months. I enjoy while I can. Home waits. It waits for me.”

He pauses, as though he’s groping for the words.

“And always, I meet very interesting people,” he says. He leans on the counter, rests his chin on his hand. “Here in Tokyo.”

Yusuke looks at his face. It’s a… confusing face. There’s nothing particularly unusual about the way it’s put together – not like Ann’s, with her wide brow and her narrow chin and the pixie peak of her nose, shapes that should war against each other – but he finds he wants to look. There’s no painting hidden in this face for him to uncover, and yet –

“Yes,” Yusuke says vaguely, just because there’s an empty space in the conversation that he thinks he’s supposed to fill. The boy’s smile takes on a pleased curl, as though Yusuke has answered a difficult question correctly.

“I study at the university,” he says. “Sophia. Where do you go?”

Akira comes towards them before Yusuke can answer. His face is almost completely blank.

“There you are,” he says, as if he’s been searching for some time, even though the bakery isn’t that big. The boy at the counter stands up straight and looks between the two of them.

“Yes?” Yusuke says. It wasn’t a secret.

“Hello,” counter-boy says, and that’s – Akira’s frowning. It’s so slight Yusuke can barely see it.

“Did you find what you needed?” Yusuke asks him. Akira shakes his head, which explains the frown.

“I can help,” counter-boy says, adjusting his gloves. He looks relieved at the chance to do his job. “What are you searching for today?”

It’s – if a boy can be cute, that’s cute. Yusuke wishes he could call up this boy on the phone and listen to him use slightly wrong words whenever he wants.

“Which of these has the strangest taste?” Akira asks. The boy gets a little pucker between his eyebrows.

“ _Étrange…_ ” he says to himself, glancing down at the cakes. Eventually he points to a shortcake with thick green icing, piped with cream and studded with strawberries.

“This, I think?” he says. “It’s lavender-tea-strawberry shortcake. But… It tastes _bad_ to me. Ugh! Like medicine.”

He laughs and sticks his tongue out. Akira grins, a shade nastily.

“We’ll take one,” he says.

The boy bites his lip, as though he’s having to hold something in, but in the end he says nothing. He puts the slice of cake on a strawberry-patterned serviette and packages it in a presentation box. There’s a sticker with the name of the patisserie holding it closed. Their mascot is a panda, which isn’t really terribly French.

“You should come back,” the boy says, once he’s done. He’s handing the cake box to Akira, but it’s Yusuke he’s talking to. “That would be nice.”

“Oh,” Yusuke says, “I – yes. Maybe.”

Out on the street, it’s still pouring rain. Akira holds his umbrella over both their heads. Yusuke has to keep stopping himself from putting a hand on Akira’s elbow. It would look odd. Yusuke is too prone to making himself look odd.

“I’m sorry I interrupted you,” Akira says. “But Ann texted. She’s done a little early. Shiho’s physical therapist had an unexpected free slot.”

“I see,” Yusuke says automatically, and then, “interrupted?”

Akira’s thumb picks at the umbrella handle, where the faux leather covering is coming off.

“Sorry,” he repeats.

“I don’t understand,” Yusuke says. Akira slants a look at him over his glasses.

“The boy on the counter,” he says. “The two of you were –“

Yusuke blinks slowly. 

“Talking?” he says. 

Akira laughs, and scrubs the palm of his hand down over his mouth and chin.

“Really?” he says, and before Yusuke can answer, he goes on. “You were just… You had that look you get.”

Yusuke waits. 

“It must be an artist thing,” Akira says. He speaks slowly, like every word is reconsidering itself on its way out. “You get a sort of… Like you’d never move again, if nobody made you. You’d just stay, and look, and be perfectly happy even while you starved to death.”

He sighs.

“Sounded less weird in my head,” he says.

Akira nudges Yusuke around a drain spout that’s gushing water into the street, and gets splashed for his trouble.

“There are theories,” Yusuke says, “that art provides a sort of crucial sustenance to the soul that cannot be got elsewhere. However, as far as I know it is not one that we can live on.”

“You don’t have to try to make me sound like less of an idiot,” Akira says, with clear fondness. “But thanks.”

They’re back at the flower shop. There’s an old lady buying an armful of pink carnations. Maybe for a brand new granddaughter. Yusuke watches as she slowly counts out her coins.

“You know, Ann thinks Suzui-san getting raped was her fault.”

The rain runs down the shop window, distorting the old woman and the patient clerk reaching out to help her.

“It wasn’t,” Akira says. His grip tightens on the umbrella handle. “Of course it wasn’t. But she’s in love with Suzui-san, and that makes everything complicated.”

“Oh,” Yusuke says.

Akira squints at him.

“You don’t have a problem with that?” 

“With –“

“With Ann. Feeling that way. About Suzui-san.”

“Of course not.”

“Because I know you had – have? – a crush on her –“

Did he? He’d wanted to paint her. She has such an unusual face.

“I don’t,” he says. “I didn’t.”

They start walking again. Yusuke thinks the socially acceptable thing might be to drop it, to let it go.

“Did I look that way?” he asks instead. “At Ann.”

Akira doesn’t speak for a few seconds. The rain continues to pelt against the top of the umbrella. It makes Yusuke think of trying to get to sleep the night before, listening to the rain against the window. He wishes fervently he were back in the attic right now, instead of facing down another long train ride.

“Yes,” Akira says. “At the start.”

“I just wanted to paint her,” Yusuke says. It’s suddenly vitally important that Akira understand this.

“Oh,” Akira says, as though the possibility had never occurred to him in all his thinking on the matter, and he’s surprised at himself. “So. The boy on the counter, him too?”

Yusuke closes his mouth. He hadn’t wanted to paint the boy on the counter. He doesn’t know what the word is, for what he wanted. Perhaps there isn’t one.

“I wanted to look at him,” he says, because that’s as much as he can say while staying honest.

“And then?” Akira says, and to Yusuke’s amazement a slow flush licks up from his neck, over his face. He watches it climb, like tissue dipped in paint.

“That was as far as I thought,” Yusuke says. Can’t looking be an end in itself?

“Okay,” Akira says. The flush remains, but it retreats slightly.

They’ve reached the hospital entrance. Ann comes down to meet them with tiny braids all through her hair, Suzui-san’s work. She doesn’t say much, but she laughs when Akira hands her the box and she peeks inside.

“It’s green!” she says. “I wonder what it tastes like.”

The train home is less crowded. Akira and Yusuke let Ann sit, and they stand pressed up against the edge of her seat, against her bare legs. She rides with the cake box in her lap.

Leblanc has a _back in fifteen minutes!_ sign on the door. Inside is cool and dim, quiet. Sojiro is behind the counter, eating leftover hotpot.

“You caught me,” he says, sheepish. There’s a little bit of sauce on his chin. “Early lunch break.”

“You know, you should sit down to eat,” Yusuke says, and Sojiro barks a laugh.

“You’re one to talk,” Akira says, marshalling him towards the stairs. Morgana is asleep on the bottom step, furry stomach rising and falling.

Upstairs, Akira opens the window. It’s still raining, and the air that drifts in smells clean and fresh, as though they’re living by the sea. For the first time today, Yusuke realizes he has no idea what to say.

“I have this thing, with Ann,” Akira says, saving him from talking. “We both look for the craziest desserts we can find. Ann loves sweet things so much she’s pretty much tried every flavor out there, but sometimes I can still surprise her.”

Yusuke sits on the sofa. It gives under his weight, letting him sink in. Akira lies down on his bed, on top of the covers. He’s the wrong way up, with his head where his feet should be. Yusuke brings his feet up onto the sofa. He feels so heavy, all of a sudden.

|

He wakes a few hours later. There’s rain dripping onto the window ledge. It hasn’t let up at all.

He gets up and closes the window. Akira is fast asleep on his back, his mouth open slightly. His feet dangle off the edge of the bed.

|

They eat a late dinner under the Sayuri, after Sojiro has gone home. They don’t have enough clean plates, so Morgana eats directly out of a tuna can, and gripes about it the whole time.

“I had a dream when we were napping,” Akira says. “You broke into Hanamura’s in your thief outfit and stole all the flowers.”

Yusuke laughs. It’s the combo of Akira’s bedhead and the slow, bemused way he’s talking.

“Where did I take them?” he asks. He says it lightly, like he’s just playing along, but he really wants to know.

“The beach,” Akira says. “You took them to see the sun.”

Yusuke can see it, then – himself in his fox mask and all the flowers, the bouquets and potted plants and cacti, lined up along the concrete walkway that runs beside the sand. The sun setting, and the waves foaming along the shore. Everything tinted golden.

“How did I carry them all?” he asks. Akira blinks.

“I don’t know,” he says. “How would I know? It was a dream.”

They go out to see a movie after. It’s still raining. The lights reflect off the surfaces of the puddles, bouncing back white and red and yellow and green, big wobbly splashes of color. They bring two umbrellas, and Yusuke keeps forgetting he has his. He bumps it into Akira’s every time he leans closer to say something. 

Yusuke wonders if Akira will text Ryuji, or Mishima, or Ann, and invite them too, but he doesn’t. Morgana rides in Akira’s bag, and meows whenever he gets hit by a stray raindrop.

They end up at a period drama, because it’s got the closest starting time. Yusuke cries near the end. There’s a girl in the row in front of them crying too, her head bowed. Her friend is rubbing her back, visible even in the low light.

Akira hands him a drink without looking too closely at his face.

“It was the cinematography, wasn’t it?” Akira asks, afterward, when they’re walking home. He’s smiling the way he does when he cracks a puzzle in a Palace.

“Yes,” Yusuke says. The last few shots… The light through the ballroom window, the way it cut the general’s face almost perfectly in half… And then the moment the camera floated up towards the ceiling and looked down on the dancers from above, their skirts bursts of color against the ballroom floor as they spun -

Akira’s phone chimes with a text from Ann.

 **WHERE DID YOU GET THIS????** it says, followed by a photo of the empty cake box. **SOOOOOOO GOOOOOOOD!!!!**

Akira laughs, and angles the screen so Yusuke can see.

|

Suzui-san has therapy sessions that stretch over visiting hours for the next couple of days, so Akira says they’ll take Ann to the patisserie near the hospital. Yusuke feels oddly trepidatious, even though it’s a nice idea for a distraction.

They take a route that doesn’t pass the hospital. On the way, Akira suggests they get take-out boxes and go eat the cake in Inokashira Park, which makes Ann light up.

The French boy is on the fresh-baked counter, of course. He seems to spot them from the other side of the store; he gets out of his lean against the counter and stands up straight.

“Hello!” he greets, as the three of them draw nearer. His eyes flick over Akira and then Ann, and Yusuke expects his attention to stop there - because it’s Ann - but it doesn’t. He focuses back on Yusuke, and even seems a little shy.

“You came back,” he says, and Akira coughs.

“Yeah, we did,” he says, taking a half step forward. There’s a minute pucker between his eyebrows. Ann giggles uncertainly, and crosses her arms across her chest.

“Um,” she says, in the weird voice she usually uses when she’s “acting”, “I’d like the lavender-tea-strawberry shortcake, please. To go.”

“That’s strangely popular at the moment,” counter-boy says, ostensibly to Ann, but he’s still looking at Yusuke. A part of Yusuke very violently wants it to stop, and the other part of him likes it. It’s entirely confusing.

“It’s – um – it’s very good!” Ann chirps. “The lavender flavor is very – uh – sophisticated, and then the strawberry is playful!”

Akira raises his eyebrows at her when counter-boy bends down to get a box, and she mouths a very defensive _what?_

“And for the gentlemen?”

“He’ll have the maple-bacon-chocolate cupcake,” Ann says, pointing at Akira. Counter-boy makes a disgusted face that seems entirely involuntary - and one which, honestly, Yusuke agrees with - but he lifts one out and boxes it.

“And for you?” he asks Yusuke.

“Um,” Yusuke says, because he hasn’t actually looked at any of the offerings, “I’ll have the white chocolate-vanilla tart.”

“I thought you would. It’s nice and sweet,” counter-boy says approvingly, and Ann makes a choking noise. Akira reaches over and thumps her on the back. 

|

When they open up the cakes in the park, it’s the first time that Yusuke sees the writing on the bottom of his box. The French boy has scribbled his phone number, and underlined it three times. His name’s apparently Jean.

Ann laughs so hard that she rolls around on her back in the grass, gasping that she’s going to be sick.

That minute frown is back on Akira’s face. Ann’s laughter goes down to wheezes, and she sits up, wiping her eyes.

“So, Yusuke, are you gonna call him?” she asks.

Yusuke glances across at Akira, who is eating his awful bacon cupcake concoction and pretending he isn’t listening.

“No,” he says.

|

Yusuke continues to stay at Leblanc. He and Akira spend afternoons lying side-by-side on Akira’s bed and reading, or they help Sojiro in the café, and then they lock up together every night. They go out to see Ryuji, or accompany Ann on shopping trips. They do it all together.

It can’t last forever – nothing does – but it can last for a while. Yusuke doesn’t bring up leaving again, and neither does Akira.

“You two have plans for today?” Sojiro asks on the morning of the fourth day, and Akira nods.

“He –“ he jerks a thumb at Yusuke – “didn’t move everything out of his dorm when he came here. So we’re going to go back and pick up some of his art supplies.”

It’s news to Yusuke.

“Ah,” Sojiro says, smiling. He adjusts his glasses. “I see. You’re going to stay for a while longer, then.”

“Well, I – if that is acceptable?” Yusuke fumbles. Sojiro flicks a glance at Akira, one that Yusuke can’t interpret. Akira never looks younger than when he’s around Sojiro, it’s the strangest thing.

“I’ve got no complaints,” Sojiro says. “You follow instructions, and you… Keep this guy out of trouble.”

It’s a loaded pause, though the words are innocuous. Yusuke is lost. Akira kicks the bottom of the bar very gently, twice, with the toe of his shoe. It seems like it’s a poor substitute for kicking something else much harder.

“Anyway,” Sojiro says eventually, with the air of a man finally giving up on talking to a rock, “it’s good timing. I’ll be away for the next few days. I might be gone by the time you get back from the dorms.”

“Is everything all right?” Yusuke asks.

Sojiro appears surprised by Yusuke’s concern. Akira reacts exactly the same way when he gets kindness he isn’t expecting. It happens far too often for Yusuke’s liking.

“Yes,” Sojiro says. “I just have some things to take care of. Leblanc usually shuts for a little while during June. All the regulars know.”

He turns to Akira.

“You don’t have to open the café, I’ll make a sign for the door. You have keys, so that’s fine. I’ll be back next Tuesday.”

Akira nods seriously.

“Do you want help with any –“

“No,” Sojiro interrupts, waving a hand. “Go to the dorms. Don't worry about me.”

|

It’s the first break in the rain for days, so they jump on the train to the dorms as fast as they can, before the sky opens again. Akira hustles Yusuke over into a free seat, and then stands over him, holding on to the overhead strap. Yusuke’s still stuck on the conversation with Sojiro. He’s missing something.

“Is it really okay with Boss if I stay longer?”

His heart thumps. He’s not sure he wants to hear the answer.

Akira just rolls his eyes.

“Yes. Ugh. Sojiro just thinks he knows everything.”

When they reach the dorms, there’s someone’s desk chair jammed in the main door, so Yusuke doesn’t even need his keycard. Akira slips in easily behind him.

The building is nearly empty. All the windows are open. Yusuke leads Akira down through the corridors. It hasn’t changed much in here since the forties – wood everywhere, and it all creaks. Despite the open windows everything smells, very faintly, of turps.

There are kids in Yusuke’s wing, of course. It’s just his luck. Arano-san and Izumi-san are lounging on their beds in the room across from his. He can see them through their open door.

“Kitagawa-san!” Arano-san says, sitting up. She’s wearing a very short skirt, and she’s allowed it to ride up. She wiggles it down, face red. Yusuke immediately feels bad. Arano-san is very sweet. She’s probably the closest thing Yusuke has ever had to a friend at school.

Izumi-san is wearing the shortest shorts known to man, and a cropped shirt tied up around her ribs. She sits up, too, and leans on one hand, smirking. The flowers on her comforter bloom between her spread fingers.

“Oh,” she says to Akira, blinking rather faster than Yusuke personally feels is necessary, “hello.”

Akira salutes her lazily.

“Yo,” he says. It’s something he’s picked up from Ryuji. He peeks into Yusuke’s room, at the two beds with their neutral blue comforters. “In here?”

“Yes,” Yusuke says. “I have canvases and paint in that wooden cabinet.”

“Got it,” Akira says, and finds a thick, heavy book to prop the bedroom door open. The sounds of him rustling around in the tall cabinet float out into the corridor.

“Kitagawa-san,” Arano-san pipes up, biting her lip, “are you really leaving?”

“Well,” Yusuke hedges, acutely aware that Akira can hear them, “I’m staying somewhere else for a while.”

Akira comes back out into the corridor with an armful of art supplies, and starts piling them up on the floor, grouping them by size to make them easier to bag.

“With your boyfriend?” Izumi-san says, hopping up off her bed and coming to lean in the doorway. She braces herself with a hand on the doorframe above Arano-san’s head, and watches Akira bend over the piles with interested dark eyes. Her hip nudges Arano-san’s once, then again, and this time it stays there. “Lucky! He’s hot.”

Yusuke feels his face flood with heat. Arano-san gives off a little squeak. Izumi-san grins, her white teeth slicing up her beautiful face.

Yusuke waits for Akira to freeze up, to stop working, to correct her, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t give any indication that he’s heard them at all. Yusuke takes another look at him, at the strong line of his back and the way his muscles flicker against the rolled-up sleeves of his shirt, at the curls at the nape of his neck, disappearing down under his shirt collar. He swallows. It’s ridiculous, as if anyone would think –

“You know,” Izumi-san says, “did you ever get a cell phone, Kitagawa-san? Join the normal world?”

When he nods, she grabs a black marker from her desk and strides over to him. She takes his hand, and extends his arm towards her.

“Here,” she says, and scrawls her number – he assumes – up the inside of his arm, in huge handwriting. She signs her name, and dots the ‘i’s with hearts. “Text me sometime. Keep Saki-chan and me amused while we rot here all summer.”

“Wait, that’s a good idea!” Arano-san chirps. She plucks the pen from Izumi-san’s hand, and gently takes Yusuke’s wrist between her fingertips. Her own handwriting is small and neat. She draws a smiley face.

“We’re always together,” Arano-san confides with a little glow, like she’s proud of it, “so if you text one of us, we can just tell the other. But it’s always good to have more numbers, right?”

“I think I have everything,” Akira interrupts. He doesn’t look annoyed, even though he’s just done all the work. He looks like he’s watching a group of small children do something mildly entertaining.

Akira insists on carrying the heaviest bags, which makes Izumi-san’s eyes cross with malevolent glee. Yusuke thinks – though he can’t be sure – that he sees Arano-san’s pointy elbow jab into her side before she can make a comment.

Arano-san and Izumi-san walk with them down to the main door. Their bare feet slap softly along the shiny wooden floors. When they reach the entrance hall, they wave Yusuke and Akira off, and then Izumi-san sticks her head out and wheels the office chair inside, letting the main door close. The rain is starting again, and there’s no sense in letting it in.

|

Yusuke rides the train back to Leblanc with his lopsided tattoos on show, feeling faintly ridiculous. Akira’s knees knock against his. A young woman smiles at the two of them, and then murmurs something to the young woman next to her, who has a large paper grocery bag of vegetables perched on her lap.

“Careful the numbers don’t run off in the rain,” Akira says. He’s trying not to laugh, but he’s not trying very hard. Yusuke’s mouth keeps attempting to say _they thought you were my boyfriend – why didn’t you say you weren’t my boyfriend_ , and _I think I used to have a crush on Arano-san and now I have her number_ , and it makes the whole ride a strain.

He gets out his phone and enters the two numbers in – Arano-san’s because he actually wants it, and Izumi-san’s because he’s afraid she’ll know immediately if he doesn’t – and sends **hello, it’s Kitagawa Yusuke** to Arano-san.

Sojiro’s gone when they get back. Akira puts down the enormous bags he’s carrying and Yusuke peers inside; Akira has folded his easel down and brought it. Yusuke feels a tightness in his chest.

“Surely that dug into your side the whole way home,” Yusuke says. Akira shrugs. He goes into the kitchen nook and opens up the fridge.

“You want stuffed bell peppers for dinner?” he asks. Yusuke does.

|

That night, lying on the couch on the precipice of sleep, Yusuke is so tired he feels as though he’s floating.

His phone chimes with a text. When he reaches down to the floor to retrieve it, he hits Morgana’s soft stomach instead, round with feline snores. He smiles.

|

After breakfast, Akira gets dressed in his work apron.

“Hanamura texted me,” he says. “It’s just for a couple of hours. She’s doing a complicated arrangement for a retirement party, so she needs someone to handle customers while she works.”

And, of course, it goes without saying that they’re all hoping Akira can get intel on their latest Mementos quest. 

Yusuke’s easel has been set up at the end of the bar, underneath Sayuri. He has virtually all of his oils, and some charcoal, and a new set of watercolors he hasn’t even cracked open yet. There’s nothing he has to do, and nowhere he has to be.

“Have a good day,” he says, and Akira’s mouth pulls into a lopsided smile, as though he’s fighting it. He brushes his hand over Yusuke’s shoulder when he walks out the door. It’s a touch that Yusuke is more used to from Joker, when he checks in with them after fights, grounds them. It feels different here, in Leblanc, with nothing threatening them. Different, not bad.

Yusuke spends the morning watching Morgana chase a fly along the bar and doing a series of miniature Morganas in messy kinetic brush strokes, painting straight without sketching or even blocking. They’re not “good”, but they look alive, little black sprites that could leap off the canvas and tumble into the world. He’s captured the essence of Morgana’s movement, and that’s a good morning’s work.

He makes tuna onigiri for lunch, and makes sure to shape a couple of miniature ones for Morgana. There isn’t much food left in the fridge, or the cupboard. They’ll need to get groceries.

He takes out his phone for the first time since he got up, and finds a flurry of messages. Ann has sent a photo of herself eating an enormous piece of cake in a fancy hotel – there’s a stray arm and long blonde curls at the very edge of the photo, which must belong to her mother. 

That’s followed by a series of texts: **also Yusuke I need to talk to you soon**

**you can’t hide out in domestic bliss forever**

Which doesn’t really make sense. He replies with **what flavor is that cake?** and gets a furious emoji for his trouble.

**NOT THE POINT AND YOU KNOW IT**

Ryuji has sent a photo of a huge piece of graffiti near the subway. **whats your artistic opinion man**

It’s bold, and the composition is beautifully balanced. The bright colors are at odds with its nihilistic message, and the brushwork is almost impressionistic. The clash of influences is impressively handled.

 **cool** , Ryuji replies.

The last messages are from Izumi-san.

 **can’t sleep** , at midnight. That must have been the message Yusuke failed to read the night before.

At one AM: **how did you trick your boyfriend into going out with you????**

And finally, five minutes later: **I mean he’s a babe and you’re pretty weird, Kitagawa**

And then, at the bottom of his notifications, there’s a simple **hi, Kitagawa-san!** from Arano-san, with a Hello Kitty gif attached. Izumi-san must have got his number off her, and now he’s going to be harassed forever, possibly.

He flicks back to the conversation with Izumi-san and types **he is not my boyfriend, Izumi-san** , then shoves his phone away. Hopefully that’ll be the end of it.

Akira comes home at five with a handful of irises, which he hands to Yusuke. Yusuke is so surprised he almost drops them.

“Can’t sell them,” Akira explains. Even after a subway ride there’s still dirt on him; a few crumbs of soil rain down on the floor as he takes off his bag. He smells earthy and fresh, like he’s been rolling around in a forest. “Thought you might want to paint them.”

He’s already thinking of how best to capture them – whether to paint them lying across the bar as though they’ve been discarded by a forgetful heiress, or to arrange them around Morgana and paint the contrast of black fur and purple-yellow flowers.

“Thank you,” he says, and goes to get some water for them. He carefully cleans out one of his old brush-water mugs they retrieved from the dorm, and stands the flowers in it. He’s had that mug a long time. There’s a yellow duck on the side. 

“We need groceries,” Akira sighs. He’s folded up on one of the stools, his elbows leaning on the counter. “But I just need to sit down for five minutes first. What did you do today?”

Yusuke points to the canvas with the myriad tiny Morganas, and Akira’s face lights up. He holds his hand out until Yusuke lifts the canvas off the easel and brings it to him to inspect. 

“Is it dry? Can I touch it?”

Yusuke nods. Akira brushes his fingertips so lightly over the little cats. 

“Personally, I think it’s Yusuke’s best work,” Morgana says, preening.

“It’s so cool how I can actually feel the paint,” Akira says. “It’s not completely flat.”

“You can have it,” Yusuke blurts. There’s something absolutely unbearable about Akira touching his work that way.

“Really?”

It’s just a painting of some cats. It’s not – letting someone come stay with you in your room, and cooking for them, and going to get their stuff out of their old dorm. It’s not paying enough attention to someone that you somehow already know what they need, saving them from the awkward process of figuring it out for themselves and then voicing it. It’s nothing.

“Of course,” he says.

|

They take the train out to the big grocery store near Kanda. Akira writes a list before they leave, and then abandons it immediately in the face of overwhelming choice. Yusuke has never gone grocery shopping – he had extremely limited input concerning what he ate when he lived at the atelier – and he doesn’t know where to begin.

Anything Yusuke examines, Akira plucks from his hand and puts in the cart. Even the tin of imported American cookie dough he looks at.

“I’m not even entirely certain I wish to eat that,” Yusuke says as Akira doggedly pushes the cart onwards. Akira grins.

“Well, we’ll find out,” he says. “And then you’ll know.”

They buy fancy mushrooms, and an expensive cut of sea bass and monkfish for Morgana, and dark Italian chocolate that has sea salt in it, and more rice, and chicken, and steak. A bunch of leeks. Peppers, and dashi, and mirin. Some spices that Sojiro doesn’t have, like star anise. And a big punnet of fat, ripe plums. They have so much cash from Mementos that even after buying weapons, there’s plenty left over.

“We’re not going to be able to carry much more,” Akira sighs. “I wish Morgana would turn human again, and then we’d have an extra pair of arms.”

“Working on it,” Morgana mutters from the bag.

There’s a mother with a baby in front of them in line, who watches them with huge eyes over her – his? – mother’s shoulder. Akira sticks his tongue out, and the baby giggles, gripping its mother’s arms with fat little fists.

On the train home, Akira is so tired he’s practically dropping to sleep. His head droops dangerously, and then it lands on Yusuke’s shoulder. He freezes in his seat, trying not to breathe too hard. Akira’s hair tickles the side of his neck.

His phone chimes. He almost pulls a muscle trying to maneuver his phone out of his pocket without jostling Akira. It’s Izumi-san again.

**ugh, fine, be that way**

**keep all your big gay secrets to yourself**

Before he can send anything back, there’s a series of rapid-fire texts from Ann.

**Stop ignoring me, you huge jerk!!!!!**

**I’m coming over there RIGHT NOW and you’re going to talk to me. We’re going to talk about THIS**

And she’s sent a photo that Yusuke has never seen before, of the side of Yusuke’s face looking up at Sayuri, and his and Akira’s empty oatmeal bowls sitting on the bar in the background. The exact quality of the early morning light makes it look as though Yusuke is in a church, worshipping. Akira must have taken it, and sent it to Ann? Perplexing.

 **and also FRENCHY FRENCHMAN**

There are a lot of possible responses to this, but Yusuke decides to go with the most obvious.

**I’m afraid you can’t, Ann**

**WHY NOT??????????????** she types. 

Yusuke raises his arm gingerly to see if he can get both himself and Akira in shot without waking him, and it turns out he can. He snaps a photo and sends it.

There’s no reply, so Yusuke wonders if he hasn’t been clear enough. **We’re not in Leblanc.**

 **I can see that** , Ann replies. **Serious question: how does it feel to be like this??????? You’re the worst person I know**

**Sorry,** Yusuke sends. **Perhaps you should speak to Akira instead.**

 **Nooo I’m not validating this codependency** , she says, which she must have got from a book. Ann reads a lot of books with titles like _Afternoon Tea With Your Inner Child_ and _The Path To Happiness Lies Within: How To Be Your Own Mountaineer_.

The next stop is theirs. Akira opens his eyes and sits up, and the loss of pressure on Yusuke’s shoulder makes him feel like it’s floating up slightly, making him uneven. They stagger through the door with the bags, and put it all away, and then instead of having dinner they take the Italian chocolate upstairs and eat half the box in front of the TV. Akira is surprisingly good at gameshows, and Morgana is even better. Yusuke is terrible, except for the one time there’s an art history round.

The room goes dark around them. Morgana jumps out the open window to do his nightly patrol of the neighborhood, which is possibly just a cover. Yusuke suspects he goes over to Ann’s, so he can lie on her bed while she brushes her hair. When Akira shuts the TV off, the room is almost pitch black.

“I’ve been thinking,” he says, “we really need to get you some sort of bed.”

“The couch is fine,” Yusuke says immediately.

“Mmm,” Akira says. “We should swap for now, at least. I’ll do some nights on the couch and you can do some nights in my bed.”

Yusuke can actually feel a bead of sweat make a break for it from his hairline. That would make him such a terrible guest.

“I’m going to politely refuse,” Yusuke says. “I’m not going to take your bed from you. It’s uncouth.”

He can’t see Akira’s face all that clearly, but Yusuke can see enough to know he’s getting that stubborn set to his jaw, the exact same one he gets when they’re almost at the end of a Mementos run and everyone is exhausted.

“It’s uncouth for me to allow my guest to develop a back problem,” he fires back.

“Then we find ourselves at an impasse,” Yusuke says, and then he gets another text, which conveniently puts the whole thing on ice. 

He’d know it was Izumi-san even if he couldn’t see her profile picture.

**i cant believe youre just going to keep all your big gay secrets to yourself**

**there are other weirdoes in the world trying to snag babes you know**

There’s a break in the messages long enough that Yusuke almost closes the messenger client.

**have you ever just wanted to cover someone with your whole disgusting terrible body and like, absorb them into you????**

Yusuke blinks.

“I think Izumi-san may be inebriated,” he says. He shows Akira the screen, and he winces.

“Ask her if Arano-san is there,” Akira says.

Yusuke does. The reply comes immediately – a **YES** and a crying emoji.

Akira whistles under his breath.

“Tell her to drink a big glass of water and go to sleep,” he says. “I realize that where she sleeps is where Arano-san sleeps, but it’ll have to do.“

Yusuke’s brain has to run that through three times before he gets it.

“Are you saying – that Izumi-san… And Arano-san –“

Akira laughs then, really laughs.

“You really didn’t –“ he says, and then he stops. He flops forward so his forehead connects with the cap of Yusuke’s shoulder. 

“Text her again,” he says, slightly muffled. His breath is very hot against Yusuke’s arm. “Tell her I’ll take her to a great queer bar if she survives.”

 **My boyfriend says he’ll take you to a great queer bar if you survive** , Yusuke types faithfully, and only realizes his mistake once the message has zoomed off. It’s just because that’s what Izumi-san always calls Akira, but it’s still embarrassing. He shoves his phone away before Akira can ask to see her response.

|

Yusuke is ready for another round of the bed/couch/guest/back problems argument once they’re dressed for bed, but Akira just squints and says, “this is stupid, we can both get in the bed.”

Yusuke starts to argue, but Akira just holds up his hand for silence. It’s a move he employs frequently as Joker.

“If it’s terrible – like if I kick you all night or something – then we won’t do it again. Okay?”

Akira is so tired he’s swaying, almost imperceptibly, on his feet. It’s late. If it’s this or a proper argument, this is the lesser evil.

Yusuke climbs into the bed. He lies rigid and still, as though he’s in a coffin. Akira flops in after him, sighs, and falls completely asleep. He doesn’t snore or kick, he just lies there, occasionally snuffling softly. His slack mouth and fluttering eyelids are illuminated by the faint moonlight falling through the windows.

Yusuke feels… something. He wants… something. 

Yusuke usually categorizes his desires by what would fulfill them – hunger needs food, loneliness needs company, sadness needs tears. The feeling incited by looking at Ann could be sated by painting. The feeling brought up by the boy on the bakery counter was satisfied just by looking.

This feeling is enormous, and unknowable. It’s unsettling. As much as Yusuke misreads other people, he always knows himself.

He reaches out a slow hand, and touches one of Akira’s curls. It feels like a terrible violation, but he’s deeply asleep and he’ll never know. Instead of being satisfied and thus dampened, the feeling gets stronger, like prodding a coal fire.

He takes his hand back. He closes his eyes firmly, and waits for sleep.

|

Yusuke wakes up alone, far later than usual. He has a text from Akira, explaining that Hanamura called him in for another shift. He also has three messages from Izumi-san:

**ugh kitagawa**

**your boyfriend is perfect**

**never speak to me again**

He shoves his phone in his pocket and goes downstairs to paint in his pajamas. Akira’s irises are still in his brush-mug on the counter; despite apparently being near death, they look vibrant and beautiful. He sits down and starts blocking out the painting, and then he looks up and it’s lunchtime, and Morgana is watching him accusingly from the bar.

He slices one of the steaks as thin as he can and rubs it with pepper, then fries it so hot the sizzle is almost deafening. It’s unbelievably tender. Morgana makes happy groaning sounds as he eats the little ribbons of meat Yusuke cuts for him.

He struggles with the painting all afternoon. By the time he hears Akira approaching the cafe, earlier than expected, he’s just about got a sketch he’s happy with.

“Hey,” Akira says, when Yusuke meets him at the door and takes his sopping umbrella from him. He’s got that fresh spring dirt smell again. He could bottle and sell it. “Miss me?”

 _Yes_ , Yusuke thinks. Something must show on his face, because Akira reaches out and grasps his shoulder briefly, then pulls away and nudges his glasses back up his nose.

Akira slips his shoes off and pads into the kitchen in his socks. He starts pulling out pans and spices and the punnet of plums, and opens a stained old cookbook. Yusuke moves to sit at the very end of the bar, so he can watch.

Akira slices and pits several of the plums. He places one, halved and stoneless, in a tiny dipping-sauce bowl and gives it to Yusuke. It’s juicy and good; the juice runs out of Yusuke’s mouth, collecting on the point of his chin and trembling there before he wipes it off.

Akira simmers the plums in a sticky, fragrant reduction full of star anise and vanilla. The entire ground floor of the café smells like a dream.

“Sojiro said he used to make this for someone,” Akira says. He turns the heat right down on the plums and covers them with a lid. “A long time ago. I wanted to try.”

The plums cook for over an hour. Akira eventually takes them off the heat and they eat a few before bed. They’re sweet and warm and filling. Yusuke unexpectedly feels his eyes fill with tears, which he blinks away.  
In the attic, Yusuke holds his breath and slides under the covers first, hardly able to believe his own daring. For a second he thinks Akira isn’t going to follow, but then there’s the slight draft of the thin summer blanket being lifted.

The back of Akira’s wrist touches Yusuke’s arm, and doesn’t move away. Yusuke closes his eyes very tightly.

|

Yusuke wakes in the morning before Akira does. He turns over and looks at Akira’s face, and then down at where the neck of his sleep shirt has been pulled out of shape, exposing half his collarbone. And then he gets up.

He sits with Morgana in the early morning light down in the café, sipping a cup of water and looking up at Sayuri. The rising sun reveals her slowly, fraction by fraction. When Akira comes downstairs, she’s half illuminated.

“Hanamura,” he says by way of explanation, gesturing to his own aproned front. “At least today should be the day. I’ll have all the info we need by tonight.”

He opens the fridge and grabs a banana, and heads to the door, where he hesitates.

Yusuke gets up and follows him. He’s not even sure of what he’s looking for, but it feels –

When he draws level with Akira, Akira reaches out and pulls him in. Yusuke feels the contact everywhere, the surprise of it, the warmth. Akira’s arms wrap right around him, and he turns his face against Yusuke’s shoulder. Yusuke tries to hug back, and hopes this amount of pressure is right.

Yusuke’s heart thuds in his chest. He worries he’s giving himself completely away, but after another minute or so, Akira just lets him go, nods, and leaves.

Yusuke stands in a daze for a few minutes afterwards, watching through the little window in the café’s door, as though Akira will come back.

“Oh boy,” Morgana groans, and then disappears back up the stairs with a contemptuous flick of his tail. Yusuke forgot he was even there.

|

He tries, for the next three hours, to paint the irises. 

He can’t figure out why the little copies of Morgana came out so easily, and why these are so difficult. He’s never been so blocked on a still life before. All he has to do is look, and then paint.

Lunchtime comes and goes, and he ruins another canvas.

They just don’t look _real_ enough. That’s what’s wrong. It’s just not good enough. It has to be _perfect_ , because - because the flowers will die, and then the painting will be all he has left.

He rubs his tired eyes harder than he should, and takes out his phone. 

**How did you know that Suzui-san was the one?** he texts to Ann.

The reply is instantaneous.

**I’m coming over right now**

|

“You’re a bonehead,” Ann says, as soon as she walks through the door. In one ice-blue sweep she takes in the two discarded canvases, and the flowers, and Yusuke’s general woebegone state, and wrinkles her nose. Yusuke feels as exposed as he would if he were still in his pajamas.

She plonks herself down in one of the booths. Morgana sprints over to sit next to her, and she rests an absent hand on his furry back.

“Talk,” she commands.

“I think I may have been very foolish,” Yusuke says. Ann rolls her eyes.

“Yeah? No duh, buddy,” she says. “You’ve only been holed up here playing house for the last week.”

Yusuke winces, and she softens.

“We’ll all support you, you know,” she says. “You know that, right? All of us.”

Yusuke sits down across from her.

“How _did_ you know?” he says, so he doesn’t have to think about all the rest. “About Suzui-san?”

Ann lifts a paper sachet of sugar from the bowl on the table, and rips it open. The sugar spills out onto the tabletop.

“It started small,” she says. She organizes the sugar grains into a pile with the side of her hand, making a little pyramid. “I’ve known Shiho a while, you know? And back then, I didn’t know I was capable of loving a girl. I thought I just admired her, because she was so strong and athletic.”

She smoothes the pyramid back down, and presses her fingertips into the grains, leaving her prints.

“But we got older and then I started to think – what would it be like to kiss her, you know? It was more like a thought experiment at first. You know the way your brain does that to you sometimes? When you’re trying to sleep or whatever. Like, _would I kiss this person I know, would I kiss that person I know_ , and usually you think about it and it’s kind of gross. It wasn’t gross, to think about it with Shiho. But I never seriously thought about doing it for real. I didn’t even think I really _wanted_ to do it for real.”

She moves on to another packet, shredding this one into tiny pieces.

“I don’t know if it’s – the same, or whatever, for guys,” she says, “but girls sometimes have this thing where like… Female friendships can get kind of flirty. You can compliment each other on being pretty and stuff, and it doesn’t mean anything. And you might be physically close, like hold hands, things like that.”

Yusuke shakes his head a little.

“I figured guys don’t have that,” she says ruefully. Yusuke clears his throat.

“It sounds nice,” he says honestly.

“It _is_ nice,” she says. “Anyway, Shiho and I started to get like that.”

She shifts a little in her seat, and then scratches her nose, and then snaps the hairtie she has around her wrist. Yusuke is afraid she’s going to stop talking, but she forges on.

“And I realized, very slowly – and telling this story has made me realize how totally hard I’ve been on you, thanks for that – I realized that I wanted Shiho to mean it. When she held my hand, I didn’t want her to let go.”

Ann coughs. She turns her head and looks at Sayuri, hanging on the wall.

“So,” she says, very quietly. “There’s no big secret. I imagine it happens for nearly everyone like that, you know? Everyone who’s like us, anyway.”

“What happened next?”

“Nothing,” Ann says. Her voice has got, somehow, even quieter. “I boxed it up inside. Shiho was feeling the same way about me, but…”

Ann’s hand plays with the fur on Morgana’s back.

“I didn’t know. She was scared, same as me. And then there was… All that stuff with Kamoshida, and Shiho, she just got so hurt. And I thought I’d missed my chance.”

Ann’s voice breaks.

“So I guess – I guess that was when I really knew. So I told her. And you know what? She thought I wouldn’t want her anymore. Because of everything that’d happened. She really thought that.”

She swallows, and then she clenches her fist.

“I will never let anyone hurt Shiho again,” she says. “That’s how I know. If I could, I would blow myself up to be a million feet tall, and I would carry her around in my arms all the time, and nobody else would ever be able to get near her, she’d be up so high.”

She shakes her head, and relaxes back into the booth.

“It sounds silly like that,” she says. “Doesn’t it?”

“I think it sounds beautiful,” Yusuke says.

Ann grins, and tugs on her left pigtail.

“I’m the happiest I’ve ever been,” she says. “Shiho’s doing great with all her therapy, and she’s gonna get out of the hospital, and after we graduate we’ll get a place together.”

 _I’m the happiest I’ve ever been_. That’s it. Yusuke has never felt so safe, and so valued, and so considered. He’s happy. 

“I’m the happiest I have ever been, too,” he says, just to try it out loud.

“Yeah?” Ann says softly.

They smile at each other for a few seconds. Yusuke feels foolish, but when he brings his hand up to his face to hide it, Ann reaches over and slaps it away.

“Ugh!” she says. “Enough emotional stuff! That’s not why I came here! Give me all the deets, tell me _everything_.”

|

Ann leaves at three, and then there are two torturous hours for Yusuke to wait until Akira’s shift is over. Arano-san texts him just before four, and Yusuke practically leaps on his phone, desperate for the distraction.

**I know this is an odd thing to ask, Kitagawa-san, but I think you’re the only person I know who can help me… How did you confess to your boyfriend? Or how did he confess to you? I know this is very abrupt, I’m sorry! Please don’t feel obligated to tell me the details if it’s too personal!**

Yusuke reads it five times, and still has no idea how to answer. He shows the screen to Morgana, who stares at him and then says, witheringly, “I’m a cat, Yusuke.” Morgana is often a cat when it suits him.

He copies the text to Akira, and adds, **I see stormy waters on the horizon for Izumi-san**.

Akira’s reply is instant. **ugh. definitely. Arano-san must be about to confess to some guy.**

It’s only then that Yusuke realizes he’s forwarded a text talking about his “boyfriend” to… his “boyfriend”. Wonderful. He has no idea what to do next.

 **What are you going to say?** Akira asks. It’s very tactful of him not to mention the boyfriend thing, really.

 **I’m going to tell her I can’t help her,** Yusuke answers.

**Seems kind of cold.**

Yusuke is taken aback.

 **It’s the truth,** he types.

He waits, but Akira doesn’t text back. His break must be over.

He flicks back to the conversation with Arano-san. There’s no need for both of them to be sitting around in agony.

 **Just tell them how you feel,** he types. **Good luck, Arano-san.**

A few minutes later, Akira texts again.

**Sorry, customer. Don’t text anything to Arano-san yet. Wait until I get home.**

Too late – though Yusuke thinks, for once, his advice was fine. He’s not sure what else Akira would have him say.

|

Yusuke paces around the entire ground floor of the café five times. Morgana tells him that watching this is making him feel sick, and darts upstairs for a nap.

He has a vague idea of doing sea bass and mushroom rice for dinner, so he takes the fillet out and checks it for bones. He gets out the mushrooms and washes them, and then chops them. He cuts his finger and runs it under the faucet.

The door to the café opens earlier than it should. It’s not even five yet. Yusuke drops the knife he’s been using on the floor, where it thankfully misses his toes.

“I’m back,” Akira calls, and Yusuke comes out of the kitchen nook to see Akira standing there, still in his apron. He must have left work in a hurry.

They stand, just looking at each other, for a few long moments. Akira’s holding a flowering dwarf cactus in a pot.

“Was Hanamura-san going to throw that away?” Yusuke asks. Akira shakes his head.

“I just… wanted you to have it,” he says. He sounds bewildered by his own actions.

“You rode the whole way on the subway,” Yusuke says, a laugh bubbling up, “with a cactus?”

Akira’s lips twitch.

“Um,” he says, “I got a seat. So it didn’t poke anybody, or anything. I put it on my lap.”

Yusuke can picture it then, vividly, Akira in his apron gently holding the cactus on his lap, the station walls flashing by through the windows behind him. The commuters wondering where he’s going.

Akira puts the cactus on the bar.

“It can live under the Sayuri,” Yusuke says. He hopes his voice isn’t shaking too much. None of this is going how he thought it might. “It’ll get the sun there. Thank you.”

Akira shoves his hands in his pockets. He looks at the floor, and the combination of his hair falling forward and the light playing off his glasses means that his entire expression is obscured.

“Cacti live a long time,” he says.

Yusuke knows, suddenly, exactly what he wants, the thing that would sate this feeling. He comes out from behind the bar, and just – walks up to Akira, and then keeps going. Akira opens his arms automatically, and Yusuke turns his head and breathes in the secret earthy smell of him.

“Welcome home,” Yusuke says, and Akira’s arms tighten a fraction. Yusuke hugs back harder, not caring if he’s doing it right, if this is the right amount of pressure, if the way he’s clinging is giving him away. He wants to give it all away.

“You know, I had a dream the other night,” Akira says, nearly a whisper, his mouth near Yusuke’s ear, “that I went to work at Hanamura’s, and I came home and you were here, and you showed me what you’d been working on, and then we made dinner.”

Yusuke blinks, and pulls back.

“But that’s just what –“

“Yeah,” Akira says. He touches the side of Yusuke’s face, and then slides his hand up into Yusuke’s hair. Yusuke leans forward, and nudges his nose against Akira’s, angles his face to kiss Akira’s soft, parted mouth. Akira’s fingertips dig in, just slightly, to Yusuke’s back.

|

Yusuke gets a text from Izumi-san while he and Akira are eating dinner. There’s a photo attached.

**guess who didn’t even need your help, mr gay wizard**

Izumi-san must have taken the photo, with her arm extended right out in front. Arano-san is tucked under her arm, looking entirely pleased with herself. Her cheeks are slightly pink, and she’s flashing a victory sign.

Yusuke shows Akira the screen, and Akira whistles.

“We underestimated Arano-san,” he says.

It’s the first dry evening in days. Akira clears their plates after dinner, dumping them in the sink for later.

“Want to go for a walk?” Akira says. “Let’s go to Shinjuku and get our fortunes read.”

Once they step out the door, Akira reaches out and takes Yusuke’s hand. They walk through Yongen, through streets that Yusuke would know now with his eyes closed. All around them, people are buying dinner, and calling loved ones on the phone to tell them they’re on their way home, and ferrying their children across the street. The twilight is just settling over everything. Akira squeezes Yusuke’s hand, and pulls him in closer.


End file.
